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Michael Hann in the Guardian considers the Sonar electronic music festival in Barcelona marking its twenty-fifth anniversary by beaming music segments to a star some twelve light years distant. He then goes on to ruminate on humans taking music into space, from Gemini astronauts in the 60s playing a mouth organ to Chris Hadfield playing music in the International Space Station. And, of course, the famous golden discs on the two Voyager probes, now moving faster than any human-made objects in history, out of our solar system (in fact one has now passed the boundary which marks the edge of our solar system, and is the first human craft in interstellar space).

And his thoughts on this? He thinks it is mostly hubris that drove the science team to include these musical representations of human culture on these probes, on records that could, theoretically, last until long after the Earth itself is gone and the sun burned dim (unless it is found by intelligent aliens and played). Those discs could, in fact, one distant day be all that remains of human culture in the far, far future, preserved forever in the cold of deep space, with music and sounds and languages from around the globe and across the centuries.

That wasn’t hubris. It was something far, far better: it was hope, it was optimism, it was reaching out for a hoped-for better future for an expanded humanity and perhaps, just perhaps, a shared future with who knows what other new friends we might find out there. Who hopefully dig our music. An infinitesimally small chance of ever being found, a message in a bottle on a cosmic ocean; probably never be found or played or even if it is, understood. But it could be, it’s improbably, not impossible. No, not hubris: hope. And wonder. And joy. Far too easy to be cynical and critical, as this journalist has been, at such artistic and cultural reaching out beyond. We need to look with better eyes than that.

I’ve been a huge admirer of Reinhard Kleist’s work going right back the best part of a decade, before it was even translated into English, impressed with a German journal’s spread on his Johnny Cash graphic biography, I See a Darkness (reviewed here). I was delighted when SelfMadeHero published the English-language edition, their first European translation, if I recall correctly, and happily the first of many since. Over the years since then I’ve read several of Kleist’s books, all published by SelfMadeHero, and even had the pleasure of chatting to him for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. And, like many of you, I suspect, I’ve been a Nick Cave fan for, well, most of my life. Singer, writer, poet, actor, an artist that doesn’t fit easily into any generic boxes, creator of works, some of which you can explain why you like, some of which, you can’t articulate, you just feel and know.

So finding out Reinhard’s new book was about Nick Cave? Oh yes, you better believe I’ve been more than eager to read this. I’ve been waiting months for it to arrive on my desk. And was it worth that wait? Oh yes. In fact I would say this is Kleist’s finest work since Cash: I See a Darkness.

Nick Cave seems like a perfect match for Kleist’s approach to graphic biography, much like Cash. And in fact some elements here – quite deliberately, I would think – echo parts of his approach to that earlier work on the Man in Black. Cash started with Johnny hunting down a man, shooting him, acting out “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”. Nice Cave: Mercy on Me begins with a young man, stifled in his small home, running away to explore the big, wide world, but coming into a town where a dark-garbed man simply shoots him – strangers not welcome. The shooter resembles a certain Australian singer, but it’s fair to say the young, wounded man is also an avatar of Cave’s personality. Later on Cash will be referenced more directly, as an influence in Cave’s artistic evolution. It feels highly appropriate, two very different musicians, but both of them with much overlapping in common, both driven by inner demons as much as creativity, both with the urge to perform, both of them ultimately larger than their music, becoming cultural icons, crossing genre boundaries.

I referred to this as a graphic biography earlier; that isn’t quite correct, that’s not exactly how Reinhard brings us into Cave’s world. He doesn’t go for the normal approach of a prose biography, the simple, chronological narrative of birth, youth, adolescence, adulthood and their respective events and influences on later life, neatly tabulated. Nor should he – we have prose works for that sort of thing. What Kleist does is more delicate and intriguing and ultimately highly effective: he takes moments from different points in the musician’s life – from his youth in Australia, travelling to Britain, the time in Berlin, the desperate, sometimes self-harming, self-destructive push to be different, change, do something new, through to the modern day, throwing in a burning road through a Hellish landscape, a certain Bluesman from a certain crossroads and even the great particle accelerator in Geneva. Wide-ranging doesn’t begin to cover it, and the use of his own words, Cave’s own writing and Kleist’s artwork all serve to give a perspective only comics can offer.

The insights into parts of Cave’s life we see here intertwine with his work – his music and his writing and even nods to film work like 20,000 Days on Earth. It’s rarely easy to separate an artist from their work, and when it is an artist like Cave, that’s even more true: Kleist doesn’t even try, he understands that both his normal life (if there is such a thing, especially for Cave) and his art and his creative process are all blended at the molecular level, symbiotic, each a part of and informing the other. And so instead with references to his songs, his novels and more and moments from his life against those lyrics – or sometimes the life as part of those lyrics – give us a flavour of the man and his art. This isn’t a chronological exposition of a man’s life and career, it’s more of an attempt to allow us to experience some of his creative process.

There are so many wonderful touches here, Kleist’s art creating many different versions of Cave – not just the obvious ones of younger Cave, older Cave, but the fictional Cave, or the semi-fictional, or perhaps sometimes the totally imaginary, the real man and the avatars from his music and writing blending, interacting. The art goes from depicting the everyday reality – a cold, winter street in Berlin or London, a dive bar in a small Aussie town – to flights of creative imagination, scenes from his songs, or characters from his books and lyrics not just coming to life, but talking to Cave, to their creator, asking why he does what he does to his creations. There are simple but highly effective moments, such as being picked up by his love, Anita, perhaps the only one who can reach him, from an addiction clinic, the back seat of the taxi growing wider between them from panel to panel in a move that visually recalls Citizen Kane’s breakfast table scene, or Cave lost in space, sending a message back to home.

“If you wrote a song about us, now, would it be a love song?”

“Yes, but love songs don’t always end well.”

Throughout it all is a sense of struggling, right from the childhood in a stultifying, boring, buttoned-down small town and the desperate, angry desire – need, really – to push against the norm, to kick it up, to change things, to evolve, mixed with frustration with himself at perceived lack of ability and direction and those around them (often in very self-destructive ways). During his time in Berlin – the Cold War, West Berlin, still divided – a musician friend tells him “if the wall wan’t there, then West Berlin would be as boring as the rest of West Germany.” It’s a remote island surrounded by a savage sea, the first to be overcome should the worst happen, and yet sometimes the edge of the volcano is where some kinds of artists need to dance, they need that sense of danger and urgency, they draw on that energy and channel. Kleist brings all of this over superbly.

This is a book I honestly can’t totally get over in terms of a review, this is, like Cave’s music, something that you can only explain so far, the rest, it just has to be experienced. Stick your best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the stereo, then sit back and let yourself sink into this headtrip into the creative being of one of our most unique artists. This one will be going straight onto my Best of the Year list come December…

“It was the end of the Swinging Sixties. That day, like so many others, the London sky was sad, like a cold cup of tea. The nasty rain rattled tediously at my windowpane. I was waiting for my new tenants to show up and inhabit me.”

It’s 1969 and dawning into the early 1970s, and it feels like things are changing, socially, politically, artistically. A young couple have come to view a huge old mansion on the outskirts of London, a vast old property well outside their then fairly slim means, except that they intend to share it with a whole bunch of their artistic friends, almost like a bohemian commune. That couple comprises a very young David and Angie – David Jones, with a genuine hit under his belt (Space Oddity) but not yet broken through, not yet Bowie. The talent is there, the love of all sorts of music, the artistic sensibility, but something’s not quite clicked yet. And that’s what this book is about – not an exhaustive biography of the Thin White Duke, but a look at a crucial short period in which the artist who would become the master of reinvention first truly invented himself for the stage. And the worlds of music and arts were never the same again…

Interestingly Nejib avoids the normal biographical form of recreating known events in a person’s timeline and illustrating them one after another. This is telegraphed right from the start as we realise that we are seeing these artistic young people – and they are oh such bright, young things here – from the perspective of Haddon Hall itself, observing these strange, new, young people living in it, not put off like others by the “discreet decrepitude” of the old mansion but instead amused, delighted, charmed by its idiosyncrasies. It’s not long before they and a group of friends are sharing this huge home – at the house-warming party a long-haired David happily showing Marc Bolan around, the house so large they even have space to turn one big room into a rehearsal space. Every musician’s dream, surely, your own space in your own home to play and record and jam…

“But when the Last Judgement comes around for pop stars, I shall willingly testify in favour of our two wild blokes, for behind their outsized egos hid two true loves of music. The could talk shop till they were blue in the face.”

There’s some tension between them, a little professional and artistic jealously perhaps, as they both struggle to make it, to stand out from the musical crowd and leave their mark, but mostly what comes across here is a camaraderie, a friendship, and a deep, deep shared love of music. That sense of warmth and the love of music in so many forms suffuses Haddon Hall. There are other events going on at the same time as the struggle to make it as a musician – relationships, children, family. There’s starting a family to think of, and David’s brother Terry is in a care home because of mental health issues, while David is one of the few people he can connect with.

There are some beautiful scenes, like the brothers settling down, just the two of them, like they did when they were younger, to play records together, Nejib delicately illustrating the almost ritualistic form of this, the choosing of the albums, slipping them out of the sleeve, needle on record, perusing sleeve notes, blissing out to good music shared with someone who means the world to you, your own personal little world for a blessed few moments. It’s a scene so many of us can empathise with because most of us have done the same with friends or siblings; it’s a blissful shared moment of music and art that can bond us emotionally with someone else forever so much that each time we hear a particular song on the radio we think on that moment, laid back in our room with them and the music playing and how for a few moments everything is just right (and how even in bad times later those moments come back to us and help us cope).

Those little, very personal moments counterbalance the larger moments in the evolution of David, as he reaches towards what will become Bowie. The BBC is showing the coverage of the first Moon landing, and there’s his Space Oddity being played to the nation’s television sets as one of the most remarkable feats in human history is finally achieved. There’s the need to focus more, to stop spreading himself about, to concentrate on this next album – perhaps his last chance to make it or else be dropped by his label (and this is an era where labels largely rule the roost, very different from today’s music scene, great if you have a contract and success, nightmare if you are a struggling musician trying to get in the door, no YouTube, SoundCloud or Twitter to build a rep with for the struggling newbie). There’s a tension in the air, like the pressure just before a thunderstorm, except here the prayer is for lightning to strike.

Nejib avoids going for a realistic look, sticking instead with a much more cartoony and loose style here (not even panel borders between scenes on the pages), using only a few colours per white page. It works stylistically with covering this story in a less traditional biographical manner (and face it, Bowie is a subject that deserves a non-traditional approach), although one slight problem is there are a few times where it takes a moment or two to work out who is who in some scenes! That’s not too often though and on reflection it may also be slightly deliberate, a visual way of referring to the androgyny of some of the styles of the period.

And there are some lovely moments worked into the art using that loose, cartoony style and limited colour palette, such as David and piano, all in blue, several scenes of working away hard, struggling knowing there is something there, not stopping for a break, pushing, frustrated, the litter of empty bottles and fag ends building up around him as he pushes onwards doggedly and… And then that wonderful moment when suddenly it clicks, the Muse flows, the colour of the figure changes from blue to green and from the piano erupts, a visual flowering of colourful music growing from his fingertips to the keys and out of the instrument to fill the house: it’s the birth of Life on Mars. There are several other scenes which capture that lightning in a bottle moment of creation beautifully, the real emotional jolt and deep satisfaction that comes with creation, be it music, painting, writing, that moment when it suddenly flows and you know you’ve got it. It only lasts a short time before we have to chase it again, but just for those moments it’s like communing with the gods …

This is a beautiful homage to one of the great musical and artistic influences of the last half century of pop culture, one many of us adored and one whose loss we felt deeply just last year. And here he is, on the cusp of it all, young, trying it all, reaching out for that future, among friends, family and the music. Nejib doesn’t exhaustively document like some biographies, instead crafting the style, the taste, the flavour of the era, of changes (pun intended) of zeitgeist and possibilities and magic in the air, if only you can grasp how to control and channel that magic, and how that magic is shared with the rest of us, incorporated into our own lives and moments (can you imagine going through this life without it?). Stick on some classic Bowie on your stereo, and then lie back with Nejib’s lovely book and just groove.

Walking around the annual Meadows Festival recently, beautifully bright, summer day, and I could hear old music drifting over the air. It was coming from this very handsome old HMV gramophone on a stall selling antiques:

Rather lovely thing to see and hear, especially in the park on a warm afternoon in the sun…

Walking home from work the other evening, after weeks of pretty yucky weather we’ve had several days of glorious spring, gorgeous golden light over Edinburgh as I was walking home in the evening. I just got my new camera back from the repair shop the day before (after a couple of years of waiting to be able to buy it what happens? Freak accident just a couple of months after I got it, water bottle burst in my bag. Argh) and with such nice light I thought I’d try it out on the walk home. I heard wonderfully weird music that sounded familiar and indeed it was – as I passed the Adam Smith monument near Mercat Cross I found Edgar Guerreiro playing his musical saw, the delightfully eerie sounds drifting out over the Royal Mile.

I’ve seen “The Saw Man” a few times on the Royal Mile, but more usually during the Festival in the summer, so was nice surprise to see him playing the Mile at this time of year. I put a few shekels in his collection box and since he was rather handily facing right towards the evening sun I had great natural light to take a couple of portrait pics.

Since the dawn of humanity, magicians, shamans, the Clever Man, the Wise Woman, whatever you want to call them, have been aware that words carry power and that music and rhythm can induce altered states, altering, changing, expanding perspective. Little wonder then, that popular music, marrying both those rhythms and melodies with the words of the lyrics can exercise such power on so many of us. Not just to induce mental states of delirious happiness or moping despair as we listen to a particular album, but the way those songs, usually the product of their times, the zeitgeist, the happening cultural trends that rise and fall like waves in the ocean and that we all try to surf for at least a while, especially when young (go on, admit it, we all did, and why the hell not, it’s what we’re meant to do, especially in that everything-seems-new flush of youthful energy and experimentation). And that brings us to revisiting this modern classic by a team – Gillen and McKelvie – who have gone on to become major names in the international comics community. This was one of their signature calling cards, just a few years ago, and despite the river of work they’ve done, both together and separately, since then, it still holds a fascination, just like a much-loved pop song. You still want to take it out the sleeve and put the needle in the groove again and just go with it…

Pop music is one of the defining socio-cultural experiences of the modern era, it can be light, frothy fun, it can be the howling agit-prop anger of early Manics, and all shades in-between, and like the comics it’s a medium that is seemingly transient, ephemeral, trends and characters come and they go, and sometimes they come around again, and even if they don’t though, they somehow remain lodged inside us, tied not just to memories of when we first loved that single or album, but everything going on around us at the time. In the same way they say a smell can evoke rich memories, so to the music we love, and the music we loved when first discovering music, oh boy does that have power over us, singly and in groups (how many of us bonded with others, friends and total strangers, over that shared musical experience at a certain place and time in our lives?). And while all pop draws from – or sometimes powers – the zeitgeist, the phenomena we now call Brit Pop really seems to capture that 90s “Cool Britannia” period in the way the Beatles capture the Swinging Sixties.

Or does it? That’s part of the question in here, as we meet David Kohl – how much of that Brit Pop era are we collectively remembering correctly, how much is ‘remembering’ all the labels applied posthumously to it by commentators and others after it had been and gone? It’s an important question for Kohl – not only is he a phonomancer, a magician who draws on music for his tricks, his own identity is bound up in that era and it’s music. The goddess Britannia who shone for those few years is gone, but her influence on what makes Kohl himself is still there, and he can feel things changing, and if they change then so will he – he may even no longer be a phonomancer or even remember what he was before he changes, perhaps being altered into just another guy with a mortgage, settling down (yes, not hard to detect that slightly older twinge here, how different from other generations we would be when we were older, as we danced, powered up on that music, and then years later realising we grew up much the same). And after an encounter with the main aspect of the goddess of music Kohl is compelled to look into Britannia – another aspect of that goddess – and her life and her death.

I find it quite brave that Gillen and McKelvie decided to give us such an unlikeable, self-obsessed, self-serving central character – that could easily backfire, but they take this arrogant bastard and still make us give a damn (there are even hints of hopes for redemption hidden in his acts). There’s more than a hint of the John Constantine about Kohl – the constant smoking, the cool pose, the hidden knowledge, the casual use of that knowledge and others for his own selfish ends, and a feeling of a much larger, darker, mysterious world around him. Maybe if Constantine had come of age in the 90s this could have been him. McKelvie’s artwork is beautifully clear black and white work here, some panels looking like they could have been stills from a 90s Japanese animation, and he captures some of the characters superbly – Kohl, trying to get back into a mindset of the music of his formative years, depicted wearing the make-up his younger self used to sport, beautifully done in crisp B&W, and instantly bringing forth memories of trying different looks in the mind of the reader (again, go on, admit it, we all tried, and even those who got it down so stylishly right look back now and think oh, what was I thinking? But it was cool at the time…).

Or the way showing a beautiful young female musician-singer in one panel, and then almost exactly the same image in the next panel, but now with jet-black eyes, works as a brilliant “jump” moment (also reminds me of the oh-so-eerie all-black eyes on Joanna Lumley in an old Sapphire and Steel episode. Creepy and disturbing), as she reveals herself to him as not just a singer-songwriter, but a major aspect of the goddess herself…

Ultimately, for me anyway, Phonogram is as much about memory and identity as it is magic and music. It’s about how we defined ourselves, and often how we continue to define ourselves, by musical tastes, gigs we were at, the people we sang along with at a certain time and place, and how that process creates part of our selves, part of our own self-image, how we see ourselves. And how that process is dynamic, rarely static, because even years after that period, even after Britannia herself has been and gone, both individually and collectively, we rewrite part of that period, and with it how we see ourselves again. And the odious Kohl, who has great taste in music in place of a moral centre, that’s part of his problem – he wasn’t just defined by the music of that era and scene, he still is. Other phonomancers have moved on, the somewhat sad retromancers cling to the old music in revival sessions to tap some magical energy, but he’s still trying to be just what he was then, and it just doesn’t work that way, not for an individual, not for popular culture, it’s a constant state of change and even the past can be redefined.

It’s a gorgeous piece of work – not just a compelling story and good hook (music is magic, magic is music, we make and experience both), but it also comes freighted with that bittersweet nostalgia and memory that makes you both laugh in shared recognition but also wince in embarrassment (did I really like that back then??) or even sigh over old regrets (we danced all that night to that music, why did I ever let you slip away…). Phonogram manages all this while looking oh-so-cool and stylish while conjuring all these competing, contrasting emotions in the reader – and a strong urge to listen to some old favourites…

Walking home from work along the Union Canal a few days ago, gorgeous (if rather cool) spring evening. As I neared the lovely old Leamington Lift Bridge I could hear a guitar, and not just a guitar, but those long, slow, lazy, drawn-out notes you only get from playing slide. Crossed over the wee bridge and this chap was parked in one corner by the edge of the bridge, happily playing away as folks walked and jogged and cycled past on the towpath. Never seen anyone busking there before, there is a short subway underpass a few moments from this spot where musicians regularly play (the tunnel gives them some cool acoustics) but not here, so it was a rather nice surprise and brightened my amble home. Chatted with the guy for a moment or two, put a few shekels in his guitar case and took a couple of pics of him playing away in the evening light by the old canal:

Apologies for the reflections, normally put lens close up to glass to avoid reflections when shooting through a window, but no way to do that in this instance and still fit all of them in. As ever click on the pic to check larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr

“This land was his land as much as the next man’s. Like the folk songs he sang, it belonged to everyone, so it belonged to no-one…”

Guardian cartoonist Nick Hayes made his graphic novel debut a couple of years ago with the intriguing – not to mention large – Rime of the Modern Mariner, an interesting contemporary riff on the classic Coleridge poem with a strong ecological message and some amazing artwork and use of pacing and rhythm. This, his second full-length work, follows Woody Guthrie, arguably one of the most famous and influential folk musicians of the last century, and a lasting influence on many later artists (not least Bob Dylan), but this is no straightforward biography told in comics form. No, what Hayes does here is more interesting than a straight biographical narrative – this is about the man, yes, but it is even more about the events and times that made him and shaped the music he sang throughout the land, criss-crossing the vast landscape of America, riding the box-cars with hoboes and with men seeking any place that had work and the promise of a better life during the heart of the Depression.

The art is mostly in a mixture of browns and coppers and beiges, recalling an old sepia photograph, and very stylised, sometimes Woody and other characters looking fairly cartoony, in other scenes the artwork looks almost like an old woodcut, and it ranges from depicting the miserable suffering of the twin economic and ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl and Depression, or the desperation of the shanty towns in and around most large American cities full of the poor looking for work that just wasn’t there, in their ‘Hoovertowns’, named after the president on whose watch these disasters happened (the shanty towns contrasting with the new gleaming skyscrapers making their early appearance on the skyline).

It’s scenes we know from Steinbeck and the Grapes of Wrath and a thousand photographs, but here Hayes works it directly into how Woody is shaped, passing through all of this, seeing men like his father go from respected, well-off successful businessman to menial work just to hold his head above water, and knowing that was better than millions could manage. No work, mass unemployment, homes and farms being foreclosed on by banks which themselves had overstretched and failed helping to create the crisis in the first place then blaming their customers for not being able to repay those mortgages and loans. It all has far too much resonance to our own troubled times since the global financial meltdown, caused, ironically, in part by a lifting of the regulations on banks and finance that were brought in after this Great Depression to stop it happening again.

But this isn’t just a walk through the horribly dust-blown suffering of those who lost everything, who tried to believe in the American Dream, that they could always move on, start again, make something of themselves then, by the million, often through no fault of their own, because of powers beyond them that could ruin their lives from afar, finding themselves destitute. While Hayes does show this suffering and desperation and how it fuels Woody’s lifelong rage at social inequality and injustice, he shows hope, he shows traditions, many brought over from the old countries, this being the early part of the 20th century when many Americans were only a generation or two off the immigration boat.

And among these traditions, songs: the shared common folk-songs, rarely written down, passed along, known by all, the communal cultural heritage of the many, telling of their own times and those of their predecessors. Woody takes these, fascinated by the stories they told, the way the songs gave voice to a poor mass of the population that would otherwise be silent, preserving their sense of identity and culture in the face of all disasters (a history for those who don’t usually get to write their own histories, preserved instead in ballads shared among the community, generation to generation) and offering little moments of joy in the misery, all singing and dancing in a local hall, troubles forgotten for a night.

“Son, down here we own the land like a hand owns its body. It don’t belong to us. We belong to it. The land was here long before we came and will be here long after we’re gone…”

Into this political-financial-ecological time of disaster Hayes also weaves a much more fantastical element, contrasting the lines closing off tracts of that vast continent, both the physical lines of fences (no trespassing, private property, keep out) or the ones on paper (bank records, congratulations, you’ve bought all this land and can do what you want, eject who you want). Hayes contrasts this with that great Westward Expansion dream that powered the previous century in the US, the seemingly endless land to be exploited (until it is over-exploited, as with the Great Plains, ancient ecology ruined without thought leading to Biblical levels of disaster) and the horizon forever free, and those astonishing landscapes, from the Great Plains to the stunning deserts. He shows the ‘patriotic’ songs of the period, which strangely enough tend to be popular with those who have done well out of the system, grasping at everything to make it turn a dollar, the 1920s and 30s version of the “1%”, even the land commodified. And out of those he starts to fashion his most famous song, “this land is your land, this land is my land…”, both song and book contrasting the promise, the dream of that astonishing, vast, continent with all its resources and space, everyone on a seemingly equal footing, except of course they’re not, there are always the smaller groups who control it all, but the dream of that freedom to be and do what you want and to make something of yourself is still there.

It’s about history, it’s about the exploitation of the many by the small elite, it’s about financial and ecological disasters and how the two are often entwined, but it is also about the music and the people, and how you can’t separate the two, how the music is made by the people but it is also a part of them and shapes them, their sense of who they are, where they came from, giving them strength to struggle on, inspire them, keep them going, tell their story. A beautiful work, beautifully executed, with enormous relevance to our own very troubled times. Stick on a best of Woody Guthrie CD then sit back and read it.

The Fringe – the world’s biggest arts festival – and the main Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Book Festival start in August, but we’re currently already in the Jazz and Blues Festival, which kicked off last weekend with with a carnival style parade along a packed Princes Street on a very hot day, then down into Princes Street Gardens afterwards where some performers put on shows in the Ross Theatre (open air theatre in the gardens, right below Castle Rock) and others did little bits on the parkland around the theatre too.

I loved this very colourful costume and the lettering round his tuba:

Of course, being Edinburgh as well as exotic musicians and dancers we had a pipe band:

This is how busy the Ross Theatre in the Gardens was after the parade:

It’s probably not surprising given I am a huge cinephile that I also really enjoy a lot of film soundtrack music. The other day I was listening to Gershwin when the album reach Rhapsody in Blue and right away I was mentally visualising that wonderful monochrome opening to Woody Allen’s Manhattan “he adored New York… for him it still pulsated to the great music of George Gershwin…”

And it made me think how sometimes certain pieces of music can become eternally associated with a scene from a film. I don’t just mean original soundtrack music – like John Williams’ opening for the original Star Wars, for instance, conjuring up that amazing (for the time, young me had seen nothing like these gigantic ships thundering across the screen after the opening crawl of text) opening of that saga, or Hans Zimmer’s powerful Inception soundtrack. No, I was thinking on music which had existed in its own right before being borrowed for us in a film – sometimes it can be a little known piece of music, or at least little known to the wider public, such as Barber’s Adagio in Platoon or Strauss’ waltz in the famous space docking sequence in 2001. Obviously classical music admirers knew those, but the films brought them to a wider audience and also indelibly linked those pieces forever in most people’s minds with those scenes in the movies.

Of course there is Herman Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By” which originally dated from the early 1930s, but really became better known – any by better known I mean immortal – in the 1940s when used in Casablanca. If not for that I doubt most of us would ever have heard of the song, whereas now if we hear it we connect it to one of the best films of all time right away.

Sometimes it can be a well-known track a lot of folk had in their collection from years back, which suddenly leaps back into the pop-cultural landscape, fresh for a new audience, a nostalgic flashback for older fans. Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life suddenly gained a second lease of life when used in the pounding opening of the film version of Trainspotting:

Or Gary Jules’ cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” for Donnie Darko:

And arguably these days for a lot of folk these days those songs will always be associated with the films. And then there’s the great use of Queen’s mid 1970s hit Bohemian Rhapsody for 90s cult hit Wayne’s World:

And Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll” with a very young Tom Cruise dancing around in his socks in Risky Business:

And the Pixies’ brilliant “Where is my mind?” for the closing of Fight Club:

And a personal favourite of mine, Goth classic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus used in the opening to The Hunger – this one going so far as to actually use Pete Murphy and the boys in the film:

And there are hundreds more – think Steppenwolf’s rock classic “Born to be Wild” in Easy Rider, the Doors and even Wagner in Apocalypse Now and goodness knows how many more, classical, jazz, pop, rock that either existed before but were little known until selected for use in a film scene or else they had enjoyed their moment of success and suddenly found themselves with a second bite at the cherry (Quentin Tarantino has done both numerous times in pretty much every film soundtrack he’s ever made). I’m sure you can think of plenty of other similar examples off the top of your head.

Walking through Edinburgh on the way home from work the other evening and came across this trio on the Mound, right by Princes Street Gardens, in the space next to the Royal Scottish Academy. They are called Marama and consisted of two drummers and a bagpiper, kicking out the jams to a fabulous beat, folk music but with a more modern edge, which reminded me of bands like Shooglenifty we used to go to see back in our student days who took Scots and Irish folk music but reworked it in a modern style (we danced all night to those, irresistible beat).

They were having a ball, drummers whacking away and the piper frequently dancing around them both as the beat rolled out across the city and the crowd cheered along.

Great fun to come across things like this just ambling home, another sign of moving properly into spring and summer (despite the weather!) as street performers start to appear more often.

And here’s a short video clip of them in action – sorry, being a street scene the audio isn’t that great and doesn’t do them justice really, but was only way I could try and grab at least a bit of of their sound to share: